Meehan Talks To Local Vets About Combating Sexual Assault In The Military
By Justin Udo and Syma Chowdhry
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - As President Barack Obama addressed sexual assault in the military during his commencement speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, a similar discussion took place at the Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service Center on Friday morning.
Throughout the discussion, victims talked about what could be done to help prevent and prosecute it and shared their stories.
Retired Army Nurse Marsha Four says not enough is being done to make service members aware of this problem:
"They keep putting out trainings about military sexual trauma, but there is no buy in," she said. "There is no accountability, and so I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I have heard this. They are kind of commonly viewed as a joke."
Congressman Meehan says the system in which victims can plead their case is flawed:
"There are 3,375 reported cases a year and the evidence is there are about 26,000 victims of military sexual assault."
Meehan says he wants to have more of these cases prosecuted, and he's taking steps to do just that.
Meehan helped introduce the Military Judicial Reform Act, which removes a little-known provision of the Uniform Code of Military Justice allowing a senior military officer to reduce or dismiss a guilty verdict. Meehan is also a cosponsor of the BE SAFE Act, bipartisan legislation to address the provision and create automatic discharge for a conviction in major sexual assault cases.
